Viomenil de Champaubert

Jean-Andre Viomenil Mathieu de Champaubert-Desregents (4 March 1772-22 October 1820) was a Major-General of the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars. As a National Guard commander, he led the defense of France's eastern borders in 1814 but was later captured by Austrians. He died in 1820 at the age of 48 after falling ill from cholera.

Biography
Jean-Andre Viomenil Mathieu de Champaubert-Desregents was born on 4 March 1772 in Tours, located in northwestern France. Champaubert joined the French Army in 1789 at the age of seventeen, enlisting in a National Guard regiment. He served in the French Revolutionary Wars in the War in the Vendee, where he led the suppression of Vendean Royalist reaction to the French Revolution. Champaubert was promoted to Colonel in 1792, when he was dispatched to eastern France to oversee the training of National Guard units on the front lines. Champaubert commanded French National Guard troops in the Battle of Valmy in September at the mere age of twenty, and fought the Austrians in the Austrian Netherlands until its capture in 1795.

In 1796, Champaubert was sent to Nice to lead General Napoleon Bonaparte's reserves in Nice, where he assisted in the reinforcing of the Army of Italy with fresh conscripts. Champaubert was made the chief-of-staff of General Jean Seruier, who led French occupation forces in Piedmont for much of the war, but he accompanied him in his campaign against the Austrians in northeastern Italy at the end of the war in 1797.

Champaubert remained at home in 1798 while Bonaparte led an Egyptian Campaign designed to put a stop to British naval superiority in India. He put down Chouannerie rebels for much of the early years of the 1800s, and in the later 1800s he was promoted to Brigadier-General and the commander of the garrison of Rennes in Brittany. Champaubert came of use when the Allies opposing Emperor Napoleon in 1814 invaded France, with Champaubert coming to command a brigade in the army of Marshal Laurent Gouvion Saint-Cyr on the right flank of the French army. During the Battle of Bar-le-Duc on 29 January 1814, he repulsed Prussian Army attacks, and was made a Major-General in the aftermath of the battle.

With the downfall of Napoleon in 1814, Champaubert was made Governor of Tours briefly, before commanding National Guard troops in Paris. Champaubert contacted cholera while in Paris and died there in 1820.